


one step closer on the right track

by dorenamryn



Category: SK8 the Infinity (Anime)
Genre: Friends With Benefits, Hurt/Comfort, Lack of Communication, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Pining, Post EP9, Relationship Study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-15 03:41:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29927355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dorenamryn/pseuds/dorenamryn
Summary: Kojiro only observes as Kaoru rolls into his usual spot, busying his hands by polishing a glass. There’s a tick to his brow, and tired bags beneath his eyes, so Kojiro takes him in stride and without question, falling into their routine like donning a well-worn pair of shoes. Light, easy, when he knows it is everything but.It’s always the push, the pull, the give, between them.
Relationships: Nanjo Kojiro | Joe/Sakurayashiki Kaoru | Cherry Blossom
Comments: 11
Kudos: 212





	one step closer on the right track

The dance is familiar. So, too, is the fall.

In the aftermath, Kaoru stumbles, limp at Kojiro’s side. His head bleeds from underneath his hair, red dripping onto his clothes and leaving stark stains against the white of his upper hakama. 

_That’ll be a pain to clean_ , Kojiro thinks as he trudges through the crowd to Kaoru’s motorcycle, the backpack carrying their boards slung over his left shoulder while Kaoru hangs off the right. _It’s a shame he keeps wearing white_.

“Kojiro,” Kaoru groans, the arm not slung over Kojiro held tight around his stomach. 

Kojiro thins his lips. “Not here,” he returns, voice low. “Not yet.”

“Joe,” Kaoru corrects, slurring the syllable. “So ‘m Cherry, still.”

“Yeah,” Kojiro affirms, hand tightening around Kaoru’s waist. “Yeah, still Cherry.”

“Where’s Carla?”

“I’ve got her,” Kojiro says. They’re almost at the parking lot. “Don’t you worry your pretty face.”

Kaoru breathes a laugh, warm against the skin of Kojiro’s bare chest. His jacket is wrapped around Kaoru’s shoulders, dark enough that the blood flowing from his head doesn’t leave a mark. 

“Can’t believe you’re _still_ flirting with me,” Kaoru huffs, an echo of faint amusement woven into his voice. “Incredible.”

“Want me to drop you?” Kojiro threatens, loosening his hold on Kaoru’s arm by a fraction.

Kaoru leans in closer in lieu of response, eyes falling closed.

“Don’t,” he says. His voice is quiet. Small, in a way Kojiro cannot come to terms with. He holds Kaoru close, something within him _aching_.

“Kidding, kidding,” Kojiro replies through a forced exhale. They’re almost there, almost at the end—

“He said I was boring,” Kaoru whispers, weakly. 

Kojiro is reminded of Adam’s sickening singsong on the podium, something bordering wicked gleaming in his smirk, and finds himself bristling with anger.

_How dare he_ , Kojiro thinks, when Kaoru stiffens in his grasp, lips twisting in pain. And it is here, in a moment of anger, that his resolve hardens, because what matters isn’t Adam— _it wouldn’t be right to refer to him as Shindo, not anymore_ —it’s Kaoru, pale and bleeding in his arms. 

He says nothing. Takes one step after another, refusing to think about Adam and the curse of their shared past, even if the twisted ring of his laughter echoes in his ears long after he revs the bike and kicks off. Kaoru’s arms are tight around his torso, and he says nothing still, a cacophony of yells and jeers following them from the abandoned mine. 

“Careful driving,” Kaoru mumbles against his back, so quiet that Kojiro almost misses it. “Wouldn’t want a great oaf like you to crash her.”

Though Kojiro wants to spit a retort in turn, he only huffs, the tension in his shoulders beginning to dissipate. “Wouldn’t dream of it,” he says instead, directing Kaoru’s motorcycle towards the hospital.

It’s cold out tonight, colder than it usually would be at this time of year. Though it is spring, it is as if it were the cusp of winter—the proverbial window freezing over in a thick layer of decorative frost, obscuring the man they once knew.

He remembers their past in waves, as pieces of water-smoothed rock being pushed against the shoreline. This is familiar—routine—for them.

Kaoru sags against him as they ride, and Kojiro’s hands tighten around the handlebars. 

“Carla,” Kojiro starts, when Carla’s voice is still tinny and off-kilter and his own hair is short. “Show me the path to the hospital with the least amount of red lights.”

“Calculating—”

“No,” Kaoru jerks behind him, the metal of his lip piercing cold against Kojiro’s neck. “No hospitals. Take me home.”

At this, Kojiro very nearly turns in his seat. “What, are you nuts? You’re bleeding all over my jacket and yours—”

“Kojiro.” That quiets him. “No hospitals.”

Kojiro purses his lips, but at the sound of Kaoru’s nearly given _please_ he has nothing to say. There’s nothing he can say, really, in the situation that they’re in. And so, he fixes his eyes on the road, relenting, like he always does, “Fine. No hospitals, but I’m taking you to my place.”

“That’s what I meant,” Kaoru murmurs, and Kojiro’s eyes widen in surprise, but Kaoru neither corrects himself nor says anything more. 

The first thing Kojiro does when they make it through the door of his apartment is sit Kaoru down on the sofa. Then, he makes for the cabinet by the kitchen sink, pulling out the first aid kit he keeps for emergencies. After all, their current situation definitely qualifies.

When he returns to the living room, Kaoru’s gaze is unfocused, distant in the way it gets when he’s wrapped up in his own head.

“Hey, Kaoru,” Kojiro calls, reaching for his hands. They’re freezing, which only has Kojiro pursing his lips, though Kaoru’s always run cold in comparison to him.

“Kaoru,” he tries again, and Kaoru’s gaze snaps to him. _Thank goodness_. The oncoming sigh he suppresses by way of a miracle, busying himself by tearing open the plastic baggie enclosing the gauze. 

Laying everything out on the coffee table, he opens the antiseptic, meeting Kaoru’s eyes before going in. “This’ll sting.”

“I know,” Kaoru replies, voice whisper soft. “Just do it.”

Without hesitation, Kojiro wipes the area around the scrape. The metal in Kaoru’s ear glints under the overhead, and Kojiro has the overwhelming urge to let his fingers linger. But he knows that isn’t what Kaoru wants.

By the time they make it to the hospital, Kaoru’s eyes are slipping closed.

“Hey,” Kojiro jerks him, careful. “Don’t go falling asleep on me now.”

Kaoru blinks, as if coming out of a stupor. Kojiro suppresses a sigh and slings his arm around Kaoru’s shoulders, beneath his legs. 

“I can walk myself,” Kaoru insists, voice distilled to a baseline that reaches through Kojiro’s chest and pierces him, sharp. He grins in return, the expression hollow. 

“Sure you can,” is all he says, tightening his grip.

“Can I see him?” Kojiro asks the round-faced woman behind the desk, once they’ve taken Kaoru to a room for examination.

“I would have to ask about your relationship with the patient,” she returns, her eyes kind when he thins his lips. She even seems sympathetic, in saying, “Unfortunately, we can only permit family members at the moment.”

_Who is he, to Kaoru?_ Lifelong friend, occasional fuck, family, home—it all snowballs together, in the end. Kojiro nods and forces a smile, not for the first time that night. It doesn’t reach his eyes when he thanks her. 

He leaves Kaoru’s motorcycle parked outside of the emergency room when he leaves— _Sia la Luce_ is close enough to walk to, anyway. So he does, wondering all the while.

_Who is Kaoru, to him?_

There’s a memory at the back of his mind. Looped on repeat, like the VHS player he remembers from his childhood, broken from that time one of his younger sisters had been a bit too rough with the tape in the way little kids are wont to be. 

“Don’t count,” Kaoru tells him, the words coming out mangled around Kojiro’s steady hand on his bottom lip. “Just do it.”

Kojiro grins, lips tilting upwards, but the concentration in his gaze doesn’t waver. “You got it, Kaoru.”

This isn’t the first time, after all. And, if the hitch in Kaoru’s breathing when the needle slips in is anything to go by, it won’t be the last, either.

“There,” Kojiro says when he’s affixed the silver ring, passing his thumb over the cool metal. He’s sure he imagines the way Kaoru’s eyes widen, minute, because the room is dim and light is scarce, and he knows where they stand.

It hurts, still, when Kaoru laughs and gently pulls his hand away.

“Stand still, will you?” Kaoru asks, and extends a thin strip of measuring tape. 

He measures the width of Kojiro’s shoulders first, pausing to note the digit down in his phone. Then, methodically, Kaoru gets the rest of him—arms, waist, inseam. Kojiro holds his breath when Kaoru measures his waist, those thin, slender hands cool in the summer sun, even through the fabric of his shirt.

After he’s finished recording the numbers, Kaoru returns the measuring tape to his bag and glances to his phone.

Kojiro tilts his head. “What’s this for, anyway?”

“Carla,” Kaoru answers. “Physics gave me an idea. I’m writing a formula for terminal velocity.”

“And you needed my help for… what, exactly?”

In return, Kaoru grins. “Data. She’s got my figures, but I need a wider pool to develop her skill more accurately.”

Planting a hand on his hip, Kojiro smiles back, fond. “Right, brainiac, ready to land a Casper?”

They’re seventeen, eighteen, and it’s Kaoru’s birthday. Kojiro invites him to his house and bakes him a cake, because Kaoru’s parents are away on a business trip and he doesn’t want him to be alone. Doesn’t want to be lonely himself, either, when Kaoru’s smile infects him like a fever, burning through him (and maybe it could burn his heartache away, too, but kissing girls in his spare time does that just fine, mostly).

Kaoru blows out the candles in one go, to claps and cheers from Kojiro’s sisters. The little laugh he exhales afterwards is worth the trouble, worth the bickering exchange over the phone it took to get him here, because Kojiro laughs too, and slams Kaoru’s head into the frosting before he can think better of it, and Kaoru squawks and hits him on the shoulder, and then— 

Then, there’s the churning of his stomach later that night, when they meet a white-hooded spectre that Kaoru takes a liking to on sight. Kojiro’s heart sinks, but he takes Kaoru home anyway. Stays the night, too, when Kaoru pulls him in and takes out a bottle of something clear and strong, eyes glittering.

Tells himself that it’s just what a friend would do. Better than letting him drink alone, right?

And if he takes comfort in Kaoru curling himself into his chest with a slurred, “I wish you’d sing for me again” several hours later, well. That’s no one’s business but his.

(He sings for him, because of course he does, until Kaoru’s asleep and his voice gives to the fickle silence.)

Another— 

“So you’re leaving? Just like that?”

“I already told you, it was my father’s choice.”

Kaoru crosses his arms, face cross, too, though no one except Kojiro can tell. There’s a tick to his brow, when Kaoru is really angry. Even still, Kojiro doesn’t place a hand on his shoulder, not like he wants, because he knows that this doesn’t involve him.

Skating with Shindo was always an ultimatum, by the end of their acquaintance. The way his eyes are set now, Kojiro observes, makes him wonder if he ever knew the other boy at all.

Kaoru only turns to face him when Shindo is back in the car, being driven out of sight. Something about his expression is torn, distraught. Kojiro tries a grin, pokes the bear, “Reckon I can get back faster than you,” and Kaoru _hmphs_ , shaking his head, but jumps onto his own board anyway.

“Hey, I never said you could have a head start!” Kojiro calls after him, the words free and familiar.

“Oh, come on,” Kaoru returns with a glance over his shoulder. His voice is light, easy, the troubling frown he sported earlier tucked away into tranquility. “I know you can keep up.”

And he does.

They skate the path to Kaoru’s house hard and fast, jumping curbs and sliding railings, and Kojiro keeps his eyes on him, noting the way his hair catches in the fluttering breeze. And when they’ve stopped, lungs rattled from the speed, Kaoru offers him a wary smirk as a consolation prize for being half a second behind, and the expression punches him in the gut.

“Thanks, Kojiro,” he says, after a pause.

Kojiro tilts his head, leaning against the fence, winded for no particular reason. “What for?”

Kaoru only shakes his head, releasing a breath of laughter that sounds more like a wheeze. “My parents are home,” he tells him, a non-sequitur. 

Kojiro shrugs his shoulders, light, even though they’re heavy. Nods along, because if Kaoru’s parents are home then that’s all he can do, really.

“I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yeah, Kaoru.”

He watches as Kaoru turns, jumping up the fence and climbing the shed by his bedroom window. Gives him a two-fingered salute when Kaoru waves, half-hearted, and watches still when he shuts the blinds.

Pulling out his phone, he deletes Shindo’s number without a second thought. Fingers lingering over Kaoru’s contact, he debates wishing him goodnight. Decides against it, finally, and skates the rest of the way to his house with only the sound of his board rolling over asphalt amid the quiet of the night.

And another— 

Kaoru grabs him by the collar of his shirt when they’re both eighteen and thoroughly intoxicated, something dark pooling in his gaze. Kojiro doesn’t think, doesn’t consider the consequences, and presses their lips together. 

Things don’t change, after that, even though Kojiro feels as though they should. The world is still turning. His part-time job and his studies haven’t evaporated. But he knows now, intimately, how the metal ring he himself had given Kaoru feels against his lips, against his stomach, against places further down than that, and that makes all the difference.

The next morning, Kaoru smiles at him, something warm, and Kojiro allows himself respite. He pulls Kaoru close, because that’s something they do now, and fucks him while he’s lying on his side. It’s different from the night before, but Kojiro thinks it’s so much nicer when he can remember the sound of Kaoru’s hitching moans without the haze of alcohol in his system. 

Kaoru kisses him goodbye and doesn’t text for a whole week.

The next time they see each other, they screw without preamble. And the next, and the next, and the next. 

One day—when Kojiro’s inside him—he announces he’s going to Italy to study, and Kaoru bites his shoulder, “ _There’s no way in hell you’re going alone_ ”, and then they’re on the plane together. And on another, and another, and another, until their relationship has shifted tangentially on its axis, and they’ve gone from friends to friends who have sex, on occassion, to inseparable—fucking in a bathroom stall in a upper class Parisian bar like hormonal teenagers at twenty two years old. 

“Want me to hold your hand?”

“Oh, shut up.”

“It’ll hurt.”

“Only a little.”

“Do you like the design?”

“Kaoru, you’ve already asked me about five hundred times. _Yes_ , I like it.”

“It’s big.”

“And?”

“And obtrusive, and difficult to get removed.”

“Why would I want to get it removed?”

“I don’t know.” A pause. “In case you grow tired of it.” _Of me_ , he doesn’t say.

Kojiro smiles at him, open, as the tattoo artist on the other side of the chair prepares the ink. 

“Kaoru,” he starts. “I’d never grow tired of you.”

It’s the simple, honest truth. And if he lets Kaoru take his hand anyway and notices that his grip is a little tighter than usual—as if he were the one being tattooed, not Kojiro—he doesn’t mention it.

It’s quiet inside, when he opens the door to _Sia la Luce._ Dark, until he flicks the switch and floods the room with hazy yellow light. 

Almost instinctively, he moves Kaoru’s usual chair to the side. Then, he goes behind the counter to grab a bottle of the cheaper kind, cracking it open and taking a swig without further thought. 

_“How is it that you know me inside and out?”_ Kaoru had asked, once. He’d been drunk, Kojiro recalls, touchy and loud and loose-lipped. 

“ _It’s not hard_ ,” Kojiro had answered, pressing a chaste kiss to his nose, grinning when Kaoru scrunched his face in complaint. “ _I just pay attention to what matters._ ”

There’s something else, too. Because it was never really that easy.

He catches Kaoru staring off into space, sometimes, after they’ve had sex. Feels him tremble, and the shift of the bed as he rises, and wonders.

“Do you love me?” Kojiro had asked, once, to silence in the dead of night. 

He wasn’t expecting anything in return, not with Kaoru fast asleep. But he didn’t ask again, either, a small and buried part of him afraid of the answer.

It boils over eventually, because it was bound to happen. 

Kaoru’s up late more often than not, be it tinkering with his Carla skateboard or smoothing out code or working with clients. Kojiro’s caught up with work, too, drafting floor plans and menu items and napkin arrangements. Their time is short, or at least it seems like it is.

Both of them have changed since their younger days. It’s noticeable, in the way Kaoru keeps his falsified politeness for longer hours and doesn’t wear his piercings anymore (though Kojiro knows they’re kept in a small box in his bedside table), and in the way Kojiro spends more time at the gym than at Kaoru’s after his shift, because, well. They’re busy people.

And then, there’s also this, from what seems like a lifetime ago:

“I’ll get him back for that,” Kaoru mumbles as Kojiro cleans the scrape on his head. “Fight for it, if I have to.”

Kojiro stills, voice low in warning, “Kaoru.”

“I know what you’re going to say.”

“He didn’t show any remorse at all!”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it does!”

Kaoru stares up at him, eyes glowing yellow in the light. “I can fight my own battles, Kojiro.”

“I know you can,” Kojiro tells him, averting his eyes. “But that doesn’t mean you have to do everything alone.”

Though Kaoru says nothing, the rest hangs in the air between them, thick and solid. Things left unsaid, simmering in the silence. Nothing ever good comes from unfinished arguments, but they’re both too stubborn, too set. This is the push—endless and all-encompassing and turning sour—shifting into shove.

“Do you still have the number of that stylist that did your hair for your grand opening?” Kojiro asks one day while they’re lounging around. Kaoru hums, absentminded, not turning away from his board as he hands Kojiro his phone.

“She should be in my contacts, under ‘stylist’,” Kaoru tells him.

Kojiro nods in thanks, tapping through to the right app, skimming as he goes to the letter _S_. Looks for the contact name, when another catches his attention. 

“You still have Adam’s number?” he questions, curious.

“Yeah,” Kaoru says, as if it doesn’t matter. He’s typing something into his laptop now, elbows resting on the deck of his board.

“You got this phone two months ago,” Kojiro states. 

Kaoru stops typing. Looks up, and says, very even, “So what?”

Logically, Kojiro knows he’s being unfair. Knows that he’s older and should be wiser, and that Kaoru doesn’t deserve his scrutiny, not when this is his own eventual fight to face. Yet, he can’t help but feel a twinge of something that feels dangerously close to betrayal.

He looks away, and part of him wants to vanish on the spot. “Nothing.”

Too quick, too rushed—and Kaoru’s observant, when it comes to him. 

“It’s not nothing,” Kaoru says, and Kojiro soon hears him approach, the creak of the bed telltale. “Tell me, Kojiro.”

“I did,” Kojiro insists. Still refusing to meet his eyes. “It’s nothing, Kaoru.”

“I can tell it’s not.”

“Well, I’m telling you it is, four-eyes.”

“Really, Kojiro? Resorting to childish insults?”

“Shut up.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

“Don’t ask stupid questions, then.”

“Don’t _lie_ to me.”

“I’m not!”

“You _are_ ,” Kaoru argues, planting an accusatory finger right at the centre of Kojiro’s chest. “Why won’t you tell me what’s wrong?”

Kojiro stills, for a moment. Then, quiet, “Why won’t you tell me you love me?”

Kaoru’s mouth drops open, but he says nothing, and that’s all the confirmation Kojiro needs.

“I think we’re done here,” he says, standing from the bed, collecting his jacket from Kaoru’s desk chair. Kaoru is still frozen, hand hovering in empty space, when Kojiro shuts the door.

It takes a week for Kaoru to text him, and another week to call. Kojiro doesn’t read his message, and only listens to the ringtone—some song he’d let Kaoru set one morning, as a joke—letting it go to voicemail, which Kaoru never leaves, because he thinks voicemails are useless when one could just call later. He doesn’t, though. Call, that is. And Kojiro doesn’t either.

In the end, he doesn’t see Kaoru until Adam returns, too. 

Prancing back from America, brilliant and gleaming, like he always was. Kojiro wants to keep his distance, but he’s a skateboarder, too. And, well, even if Adam gives their old track a pretty name and a superficial makeover, it’s still the same place it used to be. So, _S_ opens, and Kojiro comes.

He doesn’t speak with Kaoru the first day. Or the second, or the third, but there’s no question that they’re familiar around each other, skating neck and neck even through silence, because the strength of their bond was born of this, at a fundamental level. Skateboarding is the glue that binds, because there’s nothing quite like tumbling alongside the other, nothing like the experience of shared victory, shared defeat, shared determination.

This is where the pull comes in—gravitational, metaphorical, grounded in what matters and not in the pettiness that lies between the lines. 

And so, they skate. Silent, because neither of them wants to give, not yet. They’ve always been stubborn, if not more than a bit stupid, in all the ways skateboarders typically are. 

Then, there’s the fourth day—same as the one that sees Kojiro cutting the ribbon for the cameras, opening the doors to his pride and joy.

His head waitress comes by ten minutes to closing, handing him a note. “It’s from the pink-haired man at the bar,” she says. “He said he wanted to pay his compliments to the chef.”

Kojiro nods, because Kaoru always told him that he’d be there, of course he would. He reads the note: _You. Me. Beef at S. Your food’s atrocious_ , signed as “Sakurayashiki-san” rather than just “Kaoru”, because he’s pretentious like that. Unable to help himself, Kojiro barks out a laugh, something warm sparking in his chest. 

“What’s so funny?” his head waitress asks.

“It’s nothing,” Kojiro says, folding the note and tucking it into his pocket with a small smile. “Just something an old friend once said.”

The first thing Kaoru says to him on the track is: “You’re the worst, you know that?”

Kojiro takes it in stride. “Happy to hear you enjoyed the meal.”

The second thing, Kaoru says when the race is finished and the two of them have tied. “Come to my place, after.”

And Kojiro does.

The third, he pants between moans as Kojiro thrusts into him, spread-eagled on the bed and still half-clothed. “I missed you.”

Kojiro nearly misses it as his own pleasure crests and breaks and spills over, but he catches the words at just the right time, mulling them over for the rest of the night. And if he takes extra care to suck more visible bruises than he used to—into Kaoru’s thighs, his chest, his collarbones, where his yukata covers them up—Kaoru doesn’t complain. 

They see each other more frequently after that. Kaoru comes to his restaurant, Carla in tow, and Kojiro meets him at his studio before the two of them head to the track. There’s never a name to this thing between them, because putting a name to it would mean one of them has to broach the topic first, and they’re both bull-headed in their own way. 

So Kojiro sleeps around, still, and Kaoru doesn’t confide in him in the same way he might’ve when they were younger, but that’s okay, because this is the give. Despite it all, they always come back to each other. 

“Do you mind if I stay?” Kojiro asks, when they’ve washed the mud off following the onsen mishap.

Kaoru fixes him with a look from under the towel he’s using to dry his hair. “Would you leave if I said yes?”

Kojiro shrugs, and Kaoru sighs, but they fall into bed together anyway. Because it’s routine, because they want to, because when Kojiro presses his lips to the nape of Kaoru’s neck and holds him close, like that first night, nothing more needs to be said between them.

In other words, when Kaoru shows up to _Sia la Luce_ at God knows what time in the morning—in a wheelchair, no less—it doesn’t come as a surprise.

Kojiro only observes as he rolls into his usual spot, busying his hands by polishing a glass. There’s a tick to his brow, and tired bags beneath his eyes, so Kojiro takes him in stride and without question, falling into their routine like donning a well-worn pair of shoes. Light, easy, when he knows it is everything but.

It’s how they’ve always been. The push, the pull, the give. And Kojiro gives, and gives, and gives, without expectation or regret, because Kaoru is an inextricable part of him, even after everything.

“It’s empty,” Kaoru says, the bottle Kojiro left on the counter tilted halfway.

Kojiro wants to roll his eyes, but furrows his brows instead, crossing his arms. “Bring your own next time.”

“I’m injured,” Kaoru starts, indignant as he leans back. Yet, the tick in his brow has faded, somewhat, so Kojiro considers it a success. Relents, when Kaoru berates him for losing to a rookie, and grabs a bottle of the finest as he makes his way from behind the back, because that’s a given.

By the time he’s around the bar, though, Kaoru has fallen asleep. Fast, soundless, and the tension in Kojiro’s shoulders fades. 

“Adam is currently skating all by himself,” Kojiro says to the silence, making himself comfortable, unscrewing the cork. “But, we’re not alone,” he continues, pouring wine into both their glasses. “Right, Kaoru?”

The gentle clink reverberates, soft and piercing all at once. He’s not expecting anything in return now, either. But he thinks, perhaps, that he’ll have the courage to ask Kaoru again when he wakes—and that makes all the difference.

In the end, he doesn’t have to.

“You’re wrong, you know,” Kaoru whispers the next morning, lying across from him in bed. “If you think I don’t love you.”

Kojiro doesn’t move, doesn’t breathe. There’s the brush of lips against his brow as Kaoru leans in, kissing him as old lovers do, and the heavy knot in Kojiro’s chest unravels. 

Later, when he replaces the bandages around Kaoru’s head, Kojiro will come to a conclusion: of all the things that matter, he looked past the most obvious one—for all their push and pull and give, they did each in equal measure.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks episode 9 for prompting me to finish this fic after having it drafted for _weeks_. there's some stuff i didn't dwell too much on (ie adam's involvement) because i'm sure canon will discount it sometime soon, so please note that the vagueness is intentional!
> 
> you can find me on twitter [here](https://twitter.com/zersium)! thank you for reading ^-^


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